Monthly Archives: October 2014

Medical editors are trained to do much more than correcting linguistic errors in your research documents. They support you by clarifying and giving accuracy to your scientific or medical papers. They not only focus on correcting grammatical, spelling or punctuation mistakes, but also ensure that the scientific facts and data in your work are mentioned precisely. Medical editors hold academic qualifications in both linguistic and medical areas.

As medical editors are aware of all linguistic styles and standards followed by medical journals, they are able to help you comply with these styles. When you take help from a professional medical editor, you can be sure of receiving a flawless paper in a well-presented form. Medical editors are detail-oriented and deeply revise the scientific language for proper clarity, usage and flow. They remove all types of jargon and biasness in your content.

Medical editors understand the technical terminology used in your paper and accordingly shape your ideas without disturbing the original meaning of your content. They make your arguments logical and structured. They also focus on making your medical manuscript or research paper consistent and comprehensive for target readers. Thus, medical editors support your research by providing you a reader’s perspective while maintaining your own voice in research documents.

Medical writing is not just confined to writing a medical thesis or dissertation, but also includes writing an abstract, review article, medical manuscript, presentation and letter to editor. When you are working on original research, it becomes critical to start with a clear research problem and relevant study design. Medical writing also requires you to be open to ideas and work without biasness. One should also be receptive to critical feedback.

Further, it is important to adopt an ethical approach while writing. While you need to avoid mentioning anything unethical, you also need to protect the identities and clinical details of your subjects. While writing a paper, you should focus on backing up your ideas and arguments by strong evidences. Your work should be reliable and reproducible. It should also be clear and specific. Abstraction does not have much space in medical writing.

Your content needs to be meaningful and presented adequately. There should be an effective citation of related work by other researchers. There is no place for plagiarism and fabrication in medical or scientific writing. Thus, it is important to make your entire work unique and original. Finally, your work should be targeted on the right audience. It is not the same to write a medical research paper and a clinical report presentation.

An abstract can have two reasons why it needs to be written – to communicate a summary of a detailed piece of work, including research paper, journals, article, thesis, dissertation, etc. or to submit an application in order to write a paper for a particular meet or conference. In the field of medicine, you are constantly required to write research papers and therefore, you will also need to submit an abstract that is a summary of your work. It is quite difficult to incorporate all your work in a small summary with a limited word count. However, if you do it correctly, you can write an effective abstract that can serve the purpose well.

Key points to remember while writing your abstract:

In one sentence, write the objective of your paper. You may be tempted to explain it further on and keep writing, but limit your writing to just one sentence that gives a clear idea of the objective of your paper.

While writing the abstract, start in a chronological order and refer to the headlines of your topics for guidelines to write. Avoid unnecessary details since you have a limited word count and you must use it wisely if you want to create an impact.

While determining the words used in the abstract, you must keep in mind that your abstract will be read by experts in the field. So you can use medical terminology freely to explain your concepts.

Your content should flow and connect seamlessly. There should be no gaps in communication.

Use active voice rather than passive voice

The sentences in the abstract can be longer than usual and the word quality can be dense.

Check the entire content for grammar and spelling mistakes before you submit it.

Writing an abstract can be an interesting task. Give it ample of time and thought to make it impactful.

Developing an abstract of a few thousand words by condensing your entire research work may be a challenging task but is not difficult if some rules are followed. Creating an effective medical abstract is also an art that can be learned and slowly mastered. Here are some tips that can make the task simpler for you.

• Keep a check on the suggested format and develop your abstract accordingly. Additionally, restrict your content to the given word limit.
• Understand your entire project before you start writing your abstract so you may do complete justice to your research. You may also practice explaining it to your friends.
• Start writing your abstract with an apt medical question and discuss why this problem needs to be answered.
• Focus on explaining relevant aspects while describing the methodology. Explain about your adopted approach and procedures, as well as your study design. You should also discuss about your sample and subjects. Do a scientific analysis of your adopted methodology.
• When you summarize your findings, see to it that they answer your research question. Your findings should be factual and based on scientific evidences.
• It is also critical to display connections among all your findings. Thus, it can be done in the conclusion you make. Make sure to discuss your study’s implications too.

It is not simple to select a journal in which your medical paper can be published. However, it is about considering a few important factors that make your selection smoother and relevant. Here are some of the considerations that help you determine the right journal for paper publishing purposes.

Impact factor and ranking

The impact factor of a journal refers to its articles’ frequency of being cited in other publications within a specified time period. Thus, a high value on this factor means higher quality of a journal. You should consider such journals that have high impact factor and ranking.

Journal details

Consider details about a journal, such as its circulation count, language, publication frequency, years in publication, articles published annually, etc. These factors will help you in choosing the right journal for your medical paper publication.

Purpose and scope

The purpose and scope of a journal can help you assess its target audience and reach. It also helps you know about the types of research studies a journal publishes. Avoid a journal that has limited audience and space for selective research.

Rejection rate

This shows how competitive a journal is. While a highly competitive journal may have a higher rejection rate, a specialized journal has a low rejection rate. Thus, make your choice according to your priorities and publishing needs.

Time taken and fee for publication

Although these factors should be lower on priority, it is still important to consider whether a journal would be able to publish your paper faster and at cost-effective rates.